This blog will cover such topics as: motorbikes/motorcycling, software development, tech stuff, music/bass guitar gear and stuff, personal tid-bits, and whatever else I feel like writing (complaining/ranting) about.

Each post has Twitter and Email sharing links. I do most of my discussions on Twitter so it makes sense to direct any blog-based discussions there too. Email contact is available via the colophon page.

So, welcome to my blog and enjoy your stay!

I posed the idea to change my blog to either a newly named/themed WordPress blog, or do something entirely different.

Clearly, I went the different route!

I wanted something that was fast, easy to add posts, and most of all simple. I created a new WordPress blog, migrated some posts over, changed the theme, did some other stuff … and then did nothing. It never felt right. I wasn’t sure what it was. Was it that it was still WordPress?

I have always liked WordPress. They have managed to create a huge self-service website hosting solution that caters for just about everyone. You can host your own. You can have them host it. You can run with free everything. You can pay for some really cool addon features.

But I was never a fan of the post editor/posting process. I found it cumbersome. I found it restricting. I am a technical person and therefore want to be able to write my posts in HTML or Markdown and publish as I see fit.

Yes, WordPress did offer some of those features, but it still seemed too … claustrophobic inducing?

So I kept an eye out; looked at what others were doing. That’s how I found out about static page-based sites/blogs. Jekyll is one of the favourites, but there are many static site architectures and pre-processors out there. Essentially, you create your content in a dynamic and modular manner, then build the site! It builds all the pages so that they are complete static representations of what you want them to be. This means that only one page is served for one link, to everyone. You can add in some JS magic here and there, but the idea is that you don’t need to.

GitHub¹ happens to also provide a pretty neat service called GitHub Pages. It is GitHub’s site hosting service which also incorporates Jekyll and other static site building technologies.

So, I created a site and had at it! And this is the fruit of the labour. A site that is created, themed, and coded the way I want giving me the ability to tweak or rewrite as I see fit!

And I am bloody happy with it!

If you have come over here from the old blog, the content will be similar to what you have already been used to. If you are new, it will be filled with ramblings about tech, code, motorbikes, or whatever the hell I feel like at the time.

Enjoy!!!

On Twitter and on Alpha, I am @SmithPlatts.
My GitHub, HG, and SVN usernames and/or repositories are called SmithPlatts.
Heck, even my author name on my old blog was @SmithPlatts.

Coffee Buzz 1.2 is out!

WARNING I swear a little in this post; if you don’t like swear words, move along …
So I decided to take the plunge and convert my personal/private SVN repository to a Mercurial (HG) repository.

I have been creating a .NET Outlook addin lately and it has been an incredible learning journey. I have had to support 3 generations of Outlook, using the base bottom COM feature/API set (oldest supported; 2007), and have still had to stay within the speed requirements of the latest supported (2013) :-/

One thing that perplexed me was how I could hook in, early enough, to the addin load/startup process to subscribe to the AppDomain.UnHandledException and Application.ThreadException event handlers so that I can log exceptions. This is desired because Outlook is so damned efficient that it decides to kill an addin as soon as it exhibits signs of exceptional behaviour.

So, it turns out that you can test WinFroms (and WPF) UI controls from within LINQPad!

Coffee Buzz 1.1 is here!
It has been a fun holiday working on some different personal projects, and this was one of them :)

Ever wanted to quickly find out what application is listed in the registry’s Uninstall key? Wanted to know what sub-key name it has and what version is recorded?

EnumInstalledApp is the CLi utility for you!

I start the prayer;
already a feeling of disconnect …

Howdy blog followers and visitors! (if I still any of either haha)
Where am I at? What am I doing?

I hate starting things and then not finishing them.
Some things work great when treated as an always incomplete project; but, for the most part, I hate the practice.

Well, here it is, my second application!!!

What the hell is Coffee Buzz I hear you say? What’s with the extra punarific cheesiness?
Well the truth is that I am now a Software Developer!!! Coffee Buzz is my first full application! :D

Work has been amazingly flat chat! We have had so much going on in our little team of engineers/designers.
We recently had a [kinda] spur of the moment project kick-in in February with … a very unique individual as our Project Manager. He was a very different personality, and saying that I clashed with him is possibly the biggest understatement that could be made. In the first week he stole my computer chair. Yeah, that’s right, my fucking computer chair. His reason? The chair he got wasn’t comfortable enough and because I’m young, my back can handle it …

WRONG!

Last week I posted about my initial experience with AppleScript and how much of a turd I found it.

Well, it’s been a week now and I have learned heaps!!!
I have also completely changed my opinion about the language …

I am an Apple fan.

I like Mac's
and iPhones
and iPads
and iEtc's
but, professionally, I am a Windows engineer.

Paul Graham has written a beautiful article about Stuff
He puts it so succinctly; we, as “First World” people, have too much stuff.

Michael Gartenberg writes a great piece over on Macworld about Post-PC vs Sans-PC.